The Hunters
by TheMasterLink
Summary: Hunters are strange creatures, controlled by the combine, forced to do what the combine say. Jon is one of these hunters and one thats like no other. He and his pack are going to change the face of the earth forever. They are legends. They are The Hunters


The Hunters

I

A harsh wind blew over White Forest. Gordon Freeman drove up in a beaten up car with Alyx Vance in the passenger seat beside him. They both got out and walked up to a gate where a man in ripped clothes gave them directions. With a loud sound of metal scraping against metal, the gate slowly opened for them to enter White Forest. Dog, Alyx's pet decided to come along with them and slammed the gate shut behind him. Soon they found Eli, Dr. Kliener, and Dr. Magnuss...

Data Logs Lost

Searching...

Search Failed

The hunter wondered why the files had been lost so quickly. It had accessed the files via a recently updated monitor, and was reading them when suddenly it lost connection. Quickly it turned sensing human presence in the area. Slowly it trotted forward searching its surroundings with great intensity. Suddenly the hunter heard and explosion and smashed against a wall, feeling pain in its head. Dazed, its sigh slowly began to come back, all sensors were online. Bounding forward the human who had thrown a grenade at it stumbled backwards in fear. Easily the hunter stabbed the rebel with its foot and returned to the monitor.

This hunter was part of one of the many packs of hunters that had invaded White Forest. They were not only attempting to capture the large base, but also trying to extract valuable information from its data files. The combine gave each of the hunters a human-like name so that the others in a hunters pack could identify one another. This particular hunter was called Jon and was part of pack 024-563. Almost like humans theirselves, the hunters had feelings and left no hunter behind as long as the hunter was alive. The combine put these features in so that they would not leave hunters that were not yet dead behind which would cost them much material to replace.

Once again Jon hooked up to the monitor and retrieved the rest of the file. The combine used hunters as their main way to not only kill rebels and infiltrate bases, but to hack monitors and computers to get the information. Jon had the honor of being picked to get information about the fabled Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance's arrival. The extract process was at 98, Jon had just about completed his mission. Another explosion and Jon was once again thrown against a wall. The monitor had fallen on top of him, hiding him from sight and making him unable to get up. The only thing Jon could do was see a bit of what was going on in the room.

Gordon Freeman was walking around, searching for Jon so that he could finish the hunter off! For once Jon was the one who recoiled in fear, and tried desperately to escape from the monitor prison. The Freeman was walking towards him when he got hit by flechettes and fell to the ground. Another hunter jumped from the rooms catwalk and ran towards Gordon's position. Almost immediately Gordon jumped up and knocked the hunter back with a shotgun blast. Another few blasts came from his shotgun, and the hunter fell to the ground, dead. Forgetting all about Jon, Gordon jumped onto a few boxes and from there to the catwalk, where he left the room.

Jon gathered all of his strength and pushed the monitor off of himself. Quickly he ran over to where the fallen hunter lay and scanned it to identify it. The hunters name was Harold and was a part of pack 024-263. Gunshots began to ring in the distance, from a few rooms over. Jon came to his senses and looked for a way out so that he could get back to the combine. The gunshots got closer yet, but there were only two ways out of the room. One would be to go towards the gunshots, and the other would be to follow Gordon freeman!

The gunshots now came from the next room over, there was no escape for Jon! Without warning the gunshots ceased and a few shadows appeared in the doorway that would have led to the gunshots. Into the room rushed 4 combine soldiers and and 1 combine elite commander. They noticed Jon was there and ran over to him without a word. The elite motioned to the other soldiers to scan the room and keep guard. He turned back to Jon and put down his gun, feeling that it was now safe enough to do so.

"Number 024-563, Jon. You have the information for us and ready for extraction, correct?"

Jon nodded his large head and turned so that the elite was facing Jon's side. A small slot was there and the commander inserted something that looked like a floppy disk into the slot. Jon's eyes glowed as he transferred the data to the chip. Swiftly the elite took it out of the slot once it was finished and tucked it into his pocket. He signaled to the men and for Jon to follow him out of White Forest to get to an administrator. Quickly they all climbed to the catwalk-Jon just jumped up with ease-and entered the doorway there.

In the next large room there were 10 other combine soldiers shooting at 3 rebels who had shotguns and smgs. The elite found another doorway to the immediate right of their position and dashed through it. Jon followed, stopping for a second to watch as one of the rebels fell to the ground with a bullet in her head. He turned back to the doorway and charged through so that he could catch up with the others again. Unfortunately once he got through the doorway and into the next large room, the elite and soldiers were nowhere in sight.

'Where did they go?' Jon thought. 'I just stopped for a few seconds to look at the fight, but theres no one her at all.'

Slowly he walked towards a door that looked as if it had been recently opened to him and pushed it open slowly. Sunlight poured in and hit the hard concrete floor. Jon checked before he walked out and found himself in the middle of a battle. Another hunter was fighting against Gordon Freeman beyond a fence near him. A strider the size of 2 houses on top of each other was alongside the hunter and was shooting at a big silo thing. Suddenly something like a container hit the strider and suddenly blew him to pieces. Jon took a large leap over the fence and raced towards the hunter that was struggling against Gordon Freeman.

"Hey, looks like the cavalry arrived," the hunter said in the hunters language. "Give me some help here, I'm having a hard time with this guy."

"Don't fight him!" Jon exclaimed. "This guys way too tough! Its Gordon Freeman! We should go help out some other strider's and hunters. What are we doing anyways?"

"Well we're trying to destroy the silo thing! Its got a rocket inside and they're going to use it to close the super portal!"

"Lets go help out some other packs then so that we have a better chance with the silo! It'd be like a strider and 4 hunters vs. silo!" Jon quickly rolled out of the way of a shotgun blast.

The other hunter nodded and began to run backwards towards another strider and pack of hunters coming down slowly. Jon raced behind him and scanned the hunter and the hunters in the pack with the strider. The hunter he was talking too is Donovan, and from his own pack! The other two from a different pack were named Jack and John. Finally they got to the pack just in time to help out as another bomb like thing hit the strider and stuck. Jon shot it down and gained some respect from the other 3 hunters.

"Thanks for that...scanning...Jon!" Jack told him while shooting down some rebels.

"We have bigger problems though," Donovan exclaimed. "Look!"

The rocket had already launched and a large blinding flash soon took over the field. To Hunters blinding light was almost like a heavy hit to the head for a human. So Jon slowly collapsed on the ground and feel into unconsciousness. The last thing he heard were footsteps and someone speaking to another person.

"Get them inside. We'll have a little science experiment. One on anatomy..."


End file.
